https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZyhXJ3dx3Ck
Crimewatch October 1990 - witness account of blue car heading towards Darlington (05:43)
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https://www.thenorthernecho.co.uk/news/6982335.driver-saw-speed-away-ann-herons-house-killer/
[witness account of blue car leaving Aeolian House]
We watched as the car accelerated away towards Middleton St George, soon becoming a blue dot on the horizon.
https://www.thenorthernecho.co.uk/news/2049836.near-miss-murderer/
[Article reprinted with attribution - 2008]
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https://www.thenorthernecho.co.uk/news/7149717.horror-summers-day/
Two months after her death, BBC1 Crimewatch staged a reconstruction, and later that month, Darlington police received a typed tip-off identifying potential suspects.
Another desperate television appeal six weeks later, this time on Tyne Tees Crimestoppers, resulted in only five further phone calls.
However, less than a year after her death, three Darlington men were arrested in connection with the murder, but later released.
While she [AH] was on a trip to Darlington, she met successful businessman Mr Heron, who offered her a chance for a new and exciting life of holidays overseas and a break from responsibilities.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XNXAMmTN_5E
The Murder of Ann Heron: Darlington | Murdertown Podcast Series 2 Episode 5 [Crime + Investigation UK]
“A large, distinctive cb style aerial was attached to the car, with chrome coiled springs.” (9:28)
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Reddit summary with links to press articles.
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Unusually her mother [AH] had been trying to get in touch with her father in the weeks previously and Ms Cockburn says she felt "something wasn't right," with her mum in that period. At the time she put it down to possible arthritis her mother was developing that was disconcerting her.
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[PH version of afternoon timeline]
I had lunch with Ann at 1pm and returned to the office at 2pm. At about 3pm I received a telephone call from a client, Cleveland Bridge, who asked me to attend his office to discuss a contract my company was tendering for. As requested by him, I left the office shortly after 3pm and made the short journey to Cleveland Bridge and was in front of the client and two of his colleagues by about 3.15pm. I left the meeting at about 4.30pm and returned to the office via Croft and through Middleton St George village arriving back in the office at 5pm, returning home at 6pm to find Ann dead on our living room floor. Each and every step of my movements as I’ve described are corroborated by witness statements in Durham Constabulary’s own prosecution bundle of ‘evidence’ presented to my solicitor.
Police focused on a single statement by a former employee of mine who reported that he saw me driving my white Mercedes car erratically at high speed around a roundabout at 3.15pm. This alleged sighting was at the exact same time that I was sat in front of three members of Cleveland Bridge, whose completed statements testify to this fact.
One highly respected local businessman, an associate, refused to sign his statement and, as he revealed on the BBC’s Inside Out programme, was so perturbed that he immediately summoned his solicitor to his office, refusing point blank to sign it until it was amended to reflect the actual discussion that had taken place.
[reported elsewhere as being Paul Stiller - see below]
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https://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/news/north-east-news/durham-polices-only-unsolved-murder-9794417
Ann Marie, a mum-of-two and medical secretary, last saw her mum alive two weeks before the murder when she came to visit her with Peter, and they went for lunch at Largs, on the Ayrshire coast.
She had intended to travel down to see her mum from her home near Glasgow on the day she died. If she had left as planned, she would have arrived around the time of the murder.
As it was, she heard her partner discussing her mother on the phone, and knew it was bad news. Breaking down in tears, she recalled: “I knew there was a problem and he said something about mum and I thought ‘Oh my God has she got cancer?’
“The last time we had seen her she had a wrist injury.
“She had a metal splint on her hand and they were checking to see what was wrong with it, they thought it was arthritis or something. I knew it was bad news, but I did not know what it was.
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https://thetruecrimeenthusiast.co.uk/the-beauty-in-the-bikini-murder
Case summary
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https://www.thenorthernecho.co.uk/news/18603116.michael-benson-murder-darlington-mum-ann-heron/
Indeed, on the afternoon of the murder, Mr Heron had left the depot at 3.45pm in his white Mercedes, driven past the house to attend a meeting at Cleveland Bridge at 4pm before returning to the depot at 4.50pm.
However, the tone of the investigation changed when it emerged that Mr Heron had been having a short affair with a barmaid at the Dinsdale Spa golf club – and returned to the depot via the club in the vague hope of spotting her walking her dog.
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https://www.thenorthernecho.co.uk/news/2040737.everything-normal-day-apart-ended/
"She was seen by a friend on a passing bus at about two o'clock and another friend telephoned her a bit later.
She always fed Heidi, her dog, at five o'clock, but on that day she didn't."
"Then he realised something horrible was wrong. He bent down and touched her and there was blood on his fingertips. He ran to the phone and dialled 999 and then called Paul Stiller. The depot is only a few minutes away and Paul and a colleague got there before the police. Dad was slumped against his car. He asked Paul to go in. Tell me I'm wrong,' he said, but Paul went in and came out and said I'm sorry...'.
The police officer who led the case later remembered his first steps through the same front door: the immaculate home, the ticking clocks, the illuminated electric fire, the body lying facedown in a pool of blood in the otherwise perfectly tidy room.
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https://www.thenorthernecho.co.uk/news/2043009.affair-doesnt-mean-father-guilty-murder/
"In the early days of the investigation, he was asked to join an identity parade for a guy who had reported seeing a white car which he thought was about to turn into the driveway of Aeolian," says Mrs Simpson.
"Dad went down to the police station as requested in his black tie - he wore black for quite while after.
"By this time he had appeared on television and also in the media. The policeman said to the witness, 'Is the suspect in the line-up?'
"The guy walked up and down and said it's number ten. Dad was number one in the line. The police officer said at least twice 'are you sure?'.
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https://www.thenorthernecho.co.uk/news/2047286.the-gazelle-fighting-life-felt-like/
At a quarter to nine, my sister, Beverley, phoned and said they had arrested somebody for Ann, someone from Motherwell.
After a week in prison, Mr Heron was bailed to stay with Mrs Simpson and her husband at their home in Hutton Rudby, near Yarm, on one condition: he was to have no contact with Beverley.
"After the meeting, instead of returning to the depot via the shortest route, which would have taken him past Aeolian House, he travelled through Neasham and Middleton St George in the hope of perhaps seeing his girlfriend, who would usually be walking her dog at that time," says Mrs Simpson.
"He did not see her and, as witnesses agree, he arrived back at the depot at about 4.50pm. His colleague, Paul Stiller, had just taken delivery of a new car and they went together to see it.
"The police theory has him leaving Cleveland Bridge, driving to Aeolian House, committing the crime, cleaning himself and changing his clothes; getting rid of the weapon and returning to the depot for 4.50pm as if nothing had happened.
"The forensic report says that a high percentage of the fibres on Ann's body were denim, which indicated that the guy who did it was wearing jeans, but they couldn't rule out the possibility that she had worn a denim skirt that day," says Mrs Simpson.
"That doesn't sound like Ann, as she usually wore pastel cotton skirts, and it certainly doesn't sound like Dad as he has never owned a pair of jeans in his life - he is of the old school and wears slacks even to this day.
"There was also a tiny spot of DNA found on Ann. It was too small to identify using techniques at the time and they had to grow it before they could get anything from it - it was the one chance to solve the case."
By 2005, developments in DNA testing meant the fragment could be analysed, and the results led to the arrest.
"It turned out to be dad's and it came from the carpet that Ann had fallen onto," says Mrs Simpson.
"The same DNA was found in 36 other places on the carpet.
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https://www.thenorthernecho.co.uk/news/2049826.crucial-evidence-believe-will-lead-us-anns-killer/
The primary line of inquiry should have revolved around two independent sightings, by a total of five witnesses, of a blue car, which they saw travelling at excessive speed down the driveway of Aeolian House - between Middleton St George and Darlington - where Ann and Peter lived - at 5.05pm on August 3, 1990.
[Presumably four in the Liz Lamb car + lone taxi driver]
They said the car was like a Ford Sierra or an Austin Montego.
An article in The Northern Echo in 2004, by one of those witnesses, highlighted this sighting in detail.
I have repeatedly asked Durham Police the following questions, without reply:
* Why have these witnesses never been re-interviewed? One was a taxi-driver. The others were a family of three plus a friend returning from a day at the beach.
Early in the investigation, two detective constables - Tim Lerner and Jim Loughran - told Mr Heron at Dinsdale Spa Golf Club the identity of a local man whom they believed had carried out the crime.
However, the following day, a more senior officer, by the name of Harris, visited Mr Heron and withdrew the name. Why?
In one case, this comprised a chat between a witness and two detectives. The police returned later with a statement which they asked the witness to sign.
The content of this statement so concerned the witness that legal advice was sought and another formal statement was provided in the presence of a solicitor. This final statement bore no resemblance whatsoever to the one the detectives had written out to be signed.
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https://www.thenorthernecho.co.uk/news/2068000.i-last-person-see-ann-alive/
As he neared Aeolian House, the scene of the murder, he noticed a car coming towards him.
He believes Mrs Heron was driving the vehicle, which was indicating to turn in to the house.
"As we passed, I said to my mate Ann must have friends or relatives down from Scotland for the weekend' because there were people in the car - one in the passenger seat with his hands on the dashboard, and the other in the back seat," said the witness, who was driving an HGV.
"We were 12ft up in the air in the cab, looking down, and on the parcel shelf was a distinctive object."
The witness, who gave a statement to the police in 1990, believes the object was a "trademark"
carried by a man well known in Darlington's nightclub scene.
That driver has never been traced - although the witness says he also saw the blue car parked in a lay-by outside the house.
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https://www.thenorthernecho.co.uk/news/8306146.just-want-justice-ann-dad/
It concludes with a line indicating her belief that the killer was known to the family and may possibly once have been close enough to call “friend”.
The family have always believed that Ann knew her killer.
Only someone close to the family, who knew her movements and those of her husband, would have known that she was alone at the time of the murder.
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Later he tells of touching Ann as she lay dead. The blood from his hands was left on the phone as he first called 999 and then his work colleague and good friend, Paul Stiller, who worked nearby.
The blood was also found on the roof of his white Mercedes where he went outside and leaned for support sobbing and waiting for his friend, and the police, to arrive.
Debbie Simpson, 53, his daughter from a previous marriage, points out that nothing was disturbed, nothing was taken and there was no forced entry. This was no burglary gone wrong.
Aeolian House was just a few minutes’ drive from Mr Heron’s work and, as was typical, he popped home for a cup of soup and a sandwich.
Ann, meanwhile, went back to sunbathing. She had moved her sunbed to the front of the house to escape dust kicked up by a farmer harvesting a neighbouring field. That meant she could be seen, lying in her bikini, from tall vehicles on the nearby road. The house was not especially secluded but was separate from other properties – easy to spot and easy to attack. Just a week before a prowler had walked up the 50 yard driveway, frightening Ann into the home.
In fact Mrs Simpson, who, heading home from Whitby, had passed Aeolian house just five or ten minutes before her father returned home and, if her then-small children, Gary and Andrew, had not been sleeping would have called in.
Was Ann was having an affair? It would explain a man seemingly able the house with no struggle who did not burgle the house. There’s a clear ‘no’ from Mrs Simpson who nevertheless is firm in her belief that Ann must have known the man who attacked her. Her father stays silent on the issue.
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As will be outlined elsewhere, he queries the re-interviewing of several witnesses, not least that of his business associate, Paul Stiller, who is on the record of refusing to sign his 2005 witness statement saying he “didn’t recognise 40 to 50 per cent of it”.
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https://www.thenorthernecho.co.uk/news/19249459.cold-case-review-plea-historic-murder/
Regrettably a man came forward in all innocence, to help merely as a witness. He was treated as a suspect immediately.
The guy was parked up in a lay by nearby on the day of the murder waiting to meet with his longterm partner. The police just couldn't leave him alone.
[from comments below article - username NigeBoddyprivatecitizen]
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NigeBoddyprivatecitizen 8th August 2021 5:07 pm User ID: 880705
Durham Constabulary made an appeal for witnesses by asking anyone who d been in the area to come forward. A man came forward voluntarily wishing merely to be helpful. The local police detectives then became fixed on the idea that the man who came forward in response to their appeal was responsible for the murder. …
They wasted so much time on the idea, that the man who'd come forward was responsible, (interviewing him and then interviewing him again) they allowed the other lines of enquiry to dwindle to nothing.
[comment below article]
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https://www.thenorthernecho.co.uk/news/20101444.channel-5s-ann-heron-murder-documentary-will-air-tv/
NigeBoddyprivatecitizen 30th April 6:29 am User ID: 880705
…
(1) Did anyone in CID ever look into the airport fire school connections the deceased might have had? No.
(2) Did anyone ever investigate why she'd ( really) moved from Scotland to here in the first place and what she was leaving behind in Scotland? No.
[comment below article]
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https://www.gazettelive.co.uk/news/teesside-news/ann-heron-murder-look-back-22142320
The 44-year-old had been enjoying the sunshine in the garden and had planned to attend a party that evening.
Speaking on GMTV in 1995, Mr Heron gave his own view on the killing.
He said: "I don't believe that whoever killed Ann was somebody who goes about doing horrible things like this. I believe it was an ordinary guy who, for whatever reason, had to kill Ann.”
The case featured on BBC's Crimewatch in October 1990 with viewers being told a blue car had also been seen outside the house by another witness at about 4.45pm.
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